KATHMANDU, Nov 18 (NNN-XINHUA) – Nepal yesterday, started issuing e-passports for the first time.
Foreign Minister, Narayan Khadka, inaugurated the e-passport personalisation centre, at the Department of Passport, and handed over the country’s first-ever e-passport to Satya Mohan Joshi, a 102-year-old historian, the department said, in a press statement.
E-passports will ultimately replace the machine-readable passports, which were introduced in 2010, to replace the decades-old handwritten passports in Nepal.
“Only limited e-passports will be issued for a few days, as the system is still in the testing phase,” Sharad Raj Aran, spokesman for the Department of Passport, told Xinhua.
The department plans to issue e-passports in a full manner within three weeks, while District Administration Offices and other offices, authorised to issue passports in various parts of the country, will start issuing e-passports by Dec, and Nepali diplomatic missions abroad, shall issue e-passports in Jan next year, according to the press statement.
Aran said, all the offices would continue to issue machine-readable passports alongside e-passports, until necessary infrastructure is ready for e-passports only.
“We plan to fully go into the e-passport regime by Jan end,” he added.– NNN-XINHUA
